Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you're thinking about buying this book... DON'T waste your money! Any entertainment value that could otherwise be garnered from this work of fiction is greatly overshadowed by Graves' false claims that the material presented was authentic, and that it came from ancient Celtic culture. This is NOT the case. In fact, nothing presented in this book is authentic, and as it is falsely presented as such, what could have at least been an interesting work of fiction, even fails to entertain. Amazingly, Robert Graves' "White Goddess" has become a 'classic' upon which many modern "tree Ogham" books and articles have been written, however, in this text lies little, if any, decipherable truths. In fact, the book is so laden with errors and gross misinformation that it was dismissed as fiction by the foremost authorities on both Celtic studies, and the Ogham, at the time it was written (1946), authorities still heavily relied upon today for their foresight and accuracy. In fact, one of those most well respected authorities (and to this day, likely the most knowledgeable scholar on the subject, ever) was Robert Graves' own grandfather, Charles Graves. (More on this in a minute). Several main components of this text are purely fictional, as is the majority of the supporting "evidence," i.e., heavily denounced, false documents that R. Graves relied heavily upon to make some very poor assumptions, and totally wild claims. First, Graves' translations of Celtic legend and lore are linguistically shoddy at best, and many of his interpretations are highly obscure. Further, his efforts to paint Celtic legend and lore as stemming from displaced Greeks and Hebrews, and to interpret meaning into these Celtic legends from such a foreign perspective does the area of legitimate Celtic studies a serious disservice. Graves didn't do us any favors! Further, his claims concerning the Ogham and the Celtic Tree Calendar are also blatantly false, and have lead to a great deal of misinformation on the ancient writing system of the Celts, and ancient Celtic culture, in general that persists even today. Robert Graves relied very heavily upon the thoroughly discredited manuscript written by Roderic O'Flaherty in the early 17th century, that first claimed that Ogham markings were correlated with trees, which is linguistically inaccurate. At best, only seven of the Ogham characters can be interpreted as having any correlation with tree names. Secondly, and more amazingly, is his "discovery" of what he labeled the "Celtic Tree Calendar." Graves makes a far leap out into space, purporting that the Ogham was made up of five vowels and 13 primary consonants, which he claims equate to 13 months in a "Celtic Tree Calendar," when it was already well known that there are not 13, but 15 primary consonants in the Ogham (in addition to the five vowels, and another five supplemental characters) . How he managed to string together an imaginary Calendar "system" based upon O'Flaherty's manuscript, and upon which he claims Celtic culture operated, is completely beyond me. This text has been a continuous thorn in the side of Celtic scholars and academia since its writing. Robert Graves had access to the two foremost scholars on the Ogham of all time, and chose to completely dismiss them both. Although it also appears that the author wrote this book out of spite, due to very a strained relationship with both his father and grandfather, Robert Graves' further dismissal of R.A.S. Macalister (a well known and highly respected expert on the Ogham) is appalling. (Robert wrote Macalister seeking corroboration of his ideas and when they were challenged by the scholar, he blew him off!) As for Charles Graves, Robert Graves' grandfather was not only a very credible scholar, and THE foremost authority on the Ogham at the time, but was also the President of the Royal Irish Academy. He was the first scholar to discover a cryptic element to the Ogham markings, and was well received for his many contributions on the subject. Both the elder Graves and Macalister (who himself cited the work of Charles Grave's in his own research) had heavily denounced the false works of O'Flaherty, and further scoffed at Robert Graves' text, discrediting it as pure fallacy. For more useful texts on the Ogham, I highly suggest R.A.S. Macallister's Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum and The Secret Languages of Ireland (both which include work by Charles Graves), and George Calder's "Auriacept Na n-Éces - The Scholar's Primer." Some of Charles Graves' exceptional work on the Ogham can be found on-line, for free. Just do a search for: "On the Ogam Inscriptions," Hermathena, Vol. 3, c.19 C. His work on the Ogham was purely outstanding. For more on the fallacy known as "The White Goddess," be sure to read the excellent review written by the modern Celtic scholar and author, Peter Berresford Ellis, at: [...] Best of luck!